Subacute Sclerosing Pan-Encephalitis (SSPE) – Past and Present

Subacute Scerosing Pan Encephalitis (SSPE), a devastating brain disease of young children was frequently taken into account in the differential diagnosis of the so-called "neurodegenerative diseases of childhood" by paediatricians, child neurologist and psychiatrists during the second half of the last century. Fortunately, this diagnosis is considered very rarely today in well developed countries, mainly in the western hemisphere. This does not mean that the disease "vanished" although its incidence dramatically declined. One of the reasons to include SSPE in a book dedicated to "encephalitis " is not only for historical purposes, but also to remind the young generation of physicians dealing with neuro-psychiatric disorders of children and young adults, that SSPE still exists. Another goal of this chapter is to point out the reasons why SSPE is one of several disorders which fulfil the concept of "slow virus infection", a term brought up by Bjorn Sigurdsson in 1954, after he and his co-workers discovered that three sheep diseases, scrapie, visna, and sheep pulmonary adenomathosis are all caused by the same retrovirus. This revolutionary concept was later utilized by D. Carleton Gajdusek to study "infections of unknown origin" such as Kuru and Creuzfeldt-Jacob disease. The new generation of paediatricians and child neurologists who most probably have never seen a case of SSPE, will quite naturally skip the paragraph in the text-book which is dedicated to this disease. For those young colleagues this chapter may be more than "interesting" or "informative". It is written for them and hopefully may help them to diagnose correctly their first case and offer the present available palliative drug treatment. Regarding the readers in the field of public health, it may enhance their drive to achieve widespread and complete coverage of measles immunization of populations at risk.